Aamir Khan says QSQT ‘happy ending’ was never released: ‘Actors kept laughing during death scene’

“When we went to shoot the climax in the first schedule, Mansoor and I first shot the sad ending, which is what we believed in. Once we finished that, while taking the shots for the happy ending, none of us were ever convinced it was the right thing to do. So, we did it because we had to be answerable to Chachajaan (uncle Nasir Hussain) as he was producing the film. Even he wasn’t taking it too seriously. We were also laughing while doing that. We even left out a few shots,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter India.

What was the alternate climax?

Mansoor revealed that in the alternate happy ending, instead of Juhi’s character getting shot and then tumbling down the rocks to death, it was Goga Kapoor’s character Randhir Singh, who met that fate. “In the happy ending, the killer points the gun at Juhi when she’s screaming, ‘Raj! Raj!’. And then he hears somebody scream, ‘Rashmi! Rashmi!’ That was Goga Kapoor. This guy is a greater threat, so he shoots Goga Kapoor,” said Mansoor.

The filmmaker recalled how none of the actors could take that ending seriously as they kept cracking into laughter while filming the final mid-closeup shot of Goga’s character breathing his last. “He has blood coming out. For the mid-close up shot, everybody came around to see him. But before I can call action, one of the actors starts laughing. Not the spotboy, one of the actors! It happened two-three times. Then Goga said, ‘Saalon main mar raha hu, tum has rahe ho!’ (I’m dying here, and you guys just keep laughing!). That was the proof that it wasn’t working,” added Mansoor.

Mansoor and Aamir chose to shoot the happy ending because Nasir Hussain kept insisting on it consistently, from the writing stage to the filming stage. “When I was about to leave for the shoot in two weeks, he asked me, ‘Have you written the end.’ I said, ‘No, I will’ and kept delaying it. When I wrote it, the sad ending automatically flowed. And then I wrote the alternate ending, so he was happy,” recalled Mansoor.

“He didn’t come to the shoot too often, but he kept calling to ask me if I’ve shot the happy ending. The only time he showed up on set was in Bangalore during the climax shoot. He knew I was leaning towards the sad ending, so he kept reminding me,” added Mansoor, laughing. But the happy ending never made it to the film, or even the edit table. “None of us saw the rushes because Mansoor never cut it. It was lying in the cans,” revealed Aamir.

When the trials of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak took place, the older generation found it difficult to accept the sad ending. Nasir kept telling Mansoor how everyone’s pointing out the same flaw. “I’d never give a defense. Because I was very convinced. But when the younger generation showed up in later screenings, they said the ending is fantastic! I told Daddy, ‘This is the audience we’re going for,'” said Mansoor.

QSQT was originally a Nasir Hussain film

Nasir Hussain had originally conceived Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak as an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s seminal play Romeo & Juliet. There was a love story and family discord, so there had to be a tragic ending. But before he could write the climax and go on floors, he encountered medical issues. That’s when he asked his son Mansoor to step in, prompting him to put the script of his originally planned directorial debut, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (1992), on the backburner.

“QSQT was my dad’s film, with me as the surrogate mother. And Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar is my gig, and my dad helped me with it,” said Mansoor. Even though Raj Kapoor’s 1973 seminal young romance Bobby, starring Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia, also loosely inspired from Romeo & Juliet, had a happy ending, Mansoor was convinced the climax of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak had to end in tragedy. “If you force a sad ending just because you think it’s powerful, it’s not,” he said. “The sad ending was organic to that story. It was baked in the cake,” argued Aamir.

Aamir didn’t shoot the alternate climax

Aamir and Mansoor, however, dismissed Dilip Tahil’s claim that Aamir shot the film’s alternate ending while Mansoor maintained distance. Tahil, who played the antagonist Dhanraj Singh and was “the most famous name” on the film by then, told Galatta India last year, “Everyone liked the film, but not its ending. The distributors asked the makers to change it to a happy ending.”

“Nasir Hussain was a legendary producer, but at that time, he was having a tough period in his career,” claimed Tahil, recalling the filmmaker had encountered two flops in Manzil Manzil (1984) and his swansong as a director, Zabardast (1985). “After this feedback, he got a little rattled, and we all went back to shoot the happy ending. Mansoor Khan put his foot down, and he sat 20 feet away with his newspaper from where we were shooting. He refused to come. Aamir Khan shot the happy ending,” recalled Tahil.

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He even claimed that though the distributors preferred the happy ending, Mansoor insisted on the sad one and asked his father to remove his name as the director. Finally, it was on the insistence of veteran screenwriter Rahi Masoom Raza that Hussain got convinced to keep the happy ending. Even lyricist Sameer claimed on The Shubhankar Mishra podcast last year that Hussain and Mansoor had disagreements over the music of both Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar as well, which led to his exit from the film. Although Mansoor wanted Sameer to pen the lyrics for both the films, his father insisted on his longtime collaborator, Majrooh Sultanpuri.